In general, rice straw or grass is used as livestock feed, thus the rice straw that has been left over from harvesting rice is actively collected. For this reason, various types of machines have been developed and used for automatically collecting rice straw or grass, and compressing and binding the collected rice straw and grass together.
As an example of a conventional grass and rice straw collecting apparatus, a baler (round baler) is connected to the rear of an agricultural tractor used mainly in paddy fields and grass fields. While the agricultural tractor operates, forage crops such as rice straw and grass are collected by the round baler. The round baler is configured with a collecting part for collecting such forage crops, and a baling part for compressing and baling rice straw or grass collected through the collecting part.
Accordingly, the agricultural tractor operates in paddy fields and grass fields, and rice straw and grass are collected through the collecting part of the round baler and fed to the inside of the round baler. Then, the fed rice straw or grass is compressed at the baling part and is bound together using a net or vinyl when it reaches a certain size, whereby it can be used as bale silage.
However, a grass and rice straw winding-prevention apparatus of a rotor of the conventional round baler for collecting rice straw and grass is problematic in that when the forage crops collected at the collecting part are fed to the baler, the crops are caught in gaps defined between internal components such as the rotor, rollers, etc. that are provided inside the collecting apparatus and may clog the gaps. Further, the crops may be fed in a direction other than a predetermined feeding direction, which often causes failure, breakage, or malfunction of the rotor and the rollers of the grass and rice straw collecting apparatus.
In addition, grass and rice straw are wound around the rotor in the collection part, so collection and feeding of the forage crops may not be continuously efficiently performed, which leads to interruption of collection work of grass and rice straw.
Consequently, research and development are required in order to realize more rapid and efficient collection of grass and rice straw.